PARSEDATE(3) | Library Functions Manual | PARSEDATE(3)

# NAME

parsedate — date parsing function

# LIBRARY

System Utilities Library (libutil, -lutil)

# SYNOPSIS

#include <util.h>

time_t
parsedate(const char *datestr, const time_t *time, const int *tzoff);

# DESCRIPTION

The parsedate() function parses a datetime from datestr described in English relative to an optional time point, and an optional timezone offset (in minutes behind/west of UTC) specified in tzoff. If time is NULL then the current time is used. If tzoff is NULL, then the current time zone is used.

The datestr is a sequence of white-space separated items. The white-space is optional the concatenated items are not ambiguous. An empty datestr is equivalent to midnight today (the beginning of this day).

The following words have the indicated numeric meanings: last = -1, this = 0, first, next, or one = 1, second is unused so that it is not confused with “seconds”, two = 2, third or three = 3, fourth or four = 4, fifth or five = 5, sixth or six = 6, seventh or seven = 7, eighth or eight = 8, ninth or nine = 9, tenth or ten = 10, eleventh or eleven = 11, twelfth or twelve = 12.

The following words are recognized in English only: AM, PM, a.m., p.m.

The months: january, february, march, april, may, june, july, august, september, sept, october, november, december,

The days of the week: sunday, monday, tuesday, tues, wednesday, wednes, thursday, thur, thurs, friday, saturday.

Time units: year, month, fortnight, week, day, hour, minute, min, second, sec, tomorrow, yesterday.

Timezone names: gmt, ut, utc, wet, bst, wat, at, ast, adt, est, edt, cst, cdt, mst, mdt, pst, pdt, yst, ydt, hst, hdt, cat, ahst, nt, idlw, cet, met, mewt, mest, swt, sst, fwt, fst, eet, bt, zp4, zp5, zp6, wast, wadt, cct, jst, east, eadt, gst, nzt, nzst, nzdt, idle.

A variety of unambiguous dates are recognized:

9/10/69
  For years between 69-99 we assume 1900+ and for years between 0-68 we assume 2000+.
2006-11-17
  An ISO-8601 date.
69-09-10
  The year in an ISO-8601 date is always taken literally, so this is the year 69, not 2069.
10/1/2000
  October 10, 2000; the common US format.
20 Jun 1994
23jun2001
1-sep-06
  Other common abbreviations.
1/11
  The year can be omitted. This is the US month/day format.

As well as times:

10:01
10:12pm
12:11:01.000012
12:21-0500

Relative items are also supported:

-1 month
last friday
one week ago
this thursday
next sunday
+2 years

Seconds since epoch (also known as UNIX time) are also supported:

@735275209
  Tue Apr 20 03:06:49 UTC 1993

# RETURN VALUES

parsedate() returns the number of seconds passed since the Epoch, or -1 if the date could not be parsed properly. A non-error result of -1 can be distinguished from an error by setting errno to 0 before calling parsedate(), and checking the value of errno afterwards.

# SEE ALSO

date(1), errno(2), eeprom(8)

# HISTORY

The parser used in parsedate() was originally written by Steven M. Bellovin while at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was later tweaked by a couple of people on Usenet. Completely overhauled by Rich $alz and Jim Berets in August, 1990.

The parsedate() function first appeared in NetBSD 4.0.

# BUGS

1
  The parsedate() function is not re-entrant or thread-safe.
2
  The parsedate() function cannot compute days before the unix epoch (19700101).
3
  The parsedate() function assumes years less than 0 mean - year, years less than 70 mean 2000 + year, years less than 100 mean 1900 + year.

October 8, 2014 | NetBSD 7.2